Skype 5.0: Video Conferencing & Facebook Integration Unleashed

Skype have released the latest version of their VOIP software that now comes complete with video conferencing functionality, new improved design and Facebook integration.

As we stated in an article last month, rumors were circulating the internet of a Facebook and Skype partnership that could not be confirmed or denied at the time. Now we know that this is true, we see even more potential for Skype to hasten it’s domination of the VOIP market, making us bin those landlines forever. And now with the added functionality of Facebook, the possibilities to keep in touch with our friends, colleagues and family seem even easier.

First off, Skype have decided to slightly modify the homepage, making the experience feel a whole lot better and clearer. There are tutorials and a much more simple interface to make video calling, messaging, and file transfer seemless, with a much better contact search screen that now comes with images and mood messages.

Although the video conferencing does seem interesting, no doubt that the main focus of the application for most will be the integration of Facebook. You can access this by using a tab along the top of the application that will take you straight to your news feed where you can update your status and start using Skype to call your buddies.

Are you impressed with the Skype / Facebook integration? You can download Skype 5.0 for Windows by clicking this link.

I don't use Skype very much; however, I work in IT and do have it installed on my desktop and laptop. The most that I have used it for is conference calling within our department. Others in my organization use it to make calls to our International facilities. Because we have other facilities which are located overseas, Skype is a very inexpensive way to communicate with them.

Although I haven't used Skype for several months, I did have a run in with it last week. Several of my co-workers, including my boss, seemed to have had their Web browser hijacked. Upon the first few occurrences of this issue, we did not realize that the problem was coming from Skype. We were searching for evidence that their machines had been infected with some kind of virus. Each user who was affected would log on to their computer just to see multiple windows and tabs within their default Web browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, etc.) open continuously to the Facebook log in page. We found this to be very odd as all social networking sites are blocked on our network.

After developing the theory that this problem was caused by Skype, we installed it on a machine and the same problem occurred immediately after installation. In version 5, it seems that there is a bug with the Facebook integration. This bug causes Facebook to continuously open your Web browser to the log in page until your system is rendered useless. For those users who have Skype set to run at start up, this anomaly begins as soon as they log on and Skype starts. Other users are not affected until the actually open the program and start it manually.

As I mentioned before, many employees in our organization depend on Skype to communicate with other employees and facilities outside the U.S. Our solution to this problem has been to uninstall version 5 and replace it with version 4. Until Skype fixes this issue, we will continue to use version 4. In short, we are not impressed with the Facebook integration that comes with the current version.